


Always Hope

by abrahamsdaughterraisedherbow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrahamsdaughterraisedherbow/pseuds/abrahamsdaughterraisedherbow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There have been many takes on Peeta and Katniss growing back together. Here is mine. Post-Mockingjay, pre-epilogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. watered down

War ravages the soul.  
That is the one thing that remains unchanged through all that has transpired in the last few years. It's bad enough that their district lies in ruins, but in terrifyingly numerous ways, they themselves also do.  
He returns to their beloved wasteland after Dr. Aurelius has finally allowed him to do so. His first thought is on her, a desire that could belong to either one of his two selves, but he takes it as good.  
He plants primroses in front of her house, because he wants to show her how sorry he is for her loss and by some extension how destroyed he knows she is because of it.  
She seems faintly surprised to see him, but not angry or apprehensive. He tells her of his plan, to plant the flowers, and she merely nods before retreating quickly back into the house. He doesn't follow her, despite desperately wanting to. He finishes his memorial garden and leaves.  
He sees her again when he accompanies Greasy Sae to her home to bring her food. She looks ill, and as their eyes flit back and forth, passing quiet curiosity but not conversation, he is caught in a helpless and pressing want to hold her in his arms and keep her safe. Because where he could see her fire before, it is extinguished now, and the woman that sits before him is not the one he knew.  
That woman died with her sister.  
He finds her again, finally, after too many days without. She sits in the old rocker, immobile, unseeing even through her glassy gray eyes, dulled from lack of sleep and far from producing the burn they used to. Not even a spark now. Not one.  
 _Katniss._  
He almost breathes her name, but instead says, "I brought you food."  
No response.  
(He wonders if she knows he's there.)  
He takes a step closer, but only one, because he is afraid to overstep some unseen boundary and cause devastation in her already fragile mind, though hasn't he already done that one time too many?  
He shudders a little.  
"Katniss?"  
He braves it anyway, and to his dismay she gets up, not looking at him, and mounts the stairs. He can hear the creaking in her bones as she rises, and his heart sinks a little with each step.  
He doesn't try again for a long time afterward, but he does wait. He always has been.  
He hears her scream at night for the first time since the Quell, and something breaks inside him, falling and shattering, sending pieces everywhere they can hurt. He rises out of his own bed, a terrible power coursing through him that he cannot fight, not tonight. He smashes and destroys everything he can find to do so, because the monster needs release somewhere.  
The crashes still ring in his ears, though he remembers none of it.  
He wants to avoid her even longer after that, for he has remembered his affliction and sworn it would never break free of his grasp, not after so many months of learning to restrain it there. And he certainly cannot break her, never wants to break any part of her again, since she is already reduced to fragility and would probably crumble under anything else he inflicts. Which, if anything, would destroy him more than it did her.  
But she returns to his life anyway, even in a small way, because one night her screams go through him like glass and he can't take it anymore.  
Her eyes fling open, wet and frightening, and he notices again that there is no more fire in her eyes, snuffed out by fear. His heart breaks a little at the weakness of her flame, which normally surpassed tears and burned ever more beautiful and terrible during them.  
Now the flames cower under water and it saddens him.  
He resists seizing her into his arms and holding her tightly enough as if they could become one entity. They are not ready for it, he thinks. And the last thing he wants to do is scare off this new watered-down version of the girl on fire. His girl on fire.  
So it completely throws him, and her too, a little, when she grabs him and buries her face into his chest, crying hard and uncaring (unaware? She's never been good with relationships) of any boundaries between them. He cannot stop himself, then, from clinging, from stroking her hair, from gentle kisses on her head and on her neck. He stops himself from her lips, though.  
She falls back asleep against him that night, her head on his heart, breathing softly.  
He dreads morning.


	2. rag doll

To avoid any kind of trigger or confusion, because the last thing either of them needs is confusion, he leaves before she wakes. He hopes the gentle, lingering kiss on her forehead will not be their last.  
He is giving her time, though from anyone else's eyes that's the least he has ever given her.  
He starts to bake again, because he has to do something with himself besides paint horrible memories he is still trying to make sense of without her. The bakery has been rebuilt, the building rendered nearly unrecognizable. This is a good thing, he thinks. The last thing he wants is to revisit his childhood and the many ghosts that now linger there and everywhere, forever.  
And he thinks, knows probably, that she might have more answers than he does.  
But the nightmarish version of himself is always the thing holding him back, and the thought of her in pieces only reinforces this notion.  
(Though at times he asks himself, is it possible to break something that is already broken?)  
Then, after he slips into his nightmare world and tears up a canvas, paint splattering against the walls like a broken thing, which he is, he thinks, he realizes that it will be something they must face no matter what. And he cannot bear to be without her any longer. Not now, not ever.  
So he finds himself again on her doorstep. Except when he enters through the slightly open door, she is nowhere to be found. The chair sits empty, the shawl draped over it, an untouched plate of food sitting on the small adjacent table.  
He has no clue to her whereabouts until he notices tiny droplets of blood forming a path on the floor.  
She lies a few feet away, motionless, her hair spread out in waves around her.  
He kneels to attend to her in the sudden wild panic that occurs at the sight of a recent downfall before he sees with relief that she has only had a nosebleed and it seems to have stopped. Dried blood, cracked reddish-brown and ugly against her lip, does not disturb her sleep.  
Wait, she's not asleep. Her eyes are open, and for a horrible second he thinks she is dead until he sees her chest rising and falling. She stares into his soul, saying nothing and wounding everything in him, everything that hoped. And he knows his mistake. Only a part of her is dead.  
He lifts her into his arms, she a rag doll that droops over him, and carries her up the stairs and to her room. He remembers vaguely a time where he has done this for her before, and the sorrow inside him gives a little sad flop at the reminder.  
He goes into the bathroom and wets a cloth. He sits on the bed and gently wipes the blood off of her face, sloped slightly sideways with how long she must have been lying there.  
It's like wiping the face of a statue; cold and still but even then with a look of meaning behind the stone. Only when he has to press a little to free the hardness of dried blood do her gray eyes find his blue ones, which are dyed with sorrow but tinged with hope, always with hope.  
She blinks once, as if surprised he is there, before the windows to her soul clench closed again and she hisses a little in pain.  
"It's okay," he says, his voice cracking a little from lack of use, since who has there been to talk to besides her and the occasional customer? "Katniss. It's okay."  
Her name is so impossibly sweet on his tongue and already fueled by desperation to bring her back that he feels brave enough to put a gentle hand on her shoulder and say her name again.  
"Katniss," he says, and he looks at her, really looks at her until he is drowning in that grim gray sea, where he floats in cloud and fog rather than water.  
He pleads before he can stop himself.  
"Katniss. Please, wake up. Say something. Katniss. Katniss, please. Please."  
She blinks again, and there is almost a question floating there, flung out rather weakly but still thudding into his heart like she punched it there.  
She doesn't say anything, so he accepts the splintering and shattering of his heart once more, as he has for enough years for it be a dull wound and yet still possesses the ability to crumble him in an act, or lack thereof, anyway. He starts to get up.  
Her bones creak as she reaches for his arm and her hand closes around it. He freezes, shocked at both the gesture and how fragile her grip is, so fragile he could probably break it. But he doesn't.  
"Stay," she croaks, her voice so hoarse it doesn't even sound like hers.  
It is a request, not a command. But to him, it is binding. He can't and won't refuse her.  
So he slowly sits back down on her bed, unsure if this recent development is dangerous and deciding not to pursue the thought or the possibilities resulting from it.  
"Peeta," she says, and though her eyes are still empty there is the slightest ring of intensity around them. It's something. "Stay with me."  
It is another echo of a distant memory, and he knows his reply.  
"Always," he whispers.  
He adjusts himself so he is lying next to her on the bed and takes her hand in his. She lifts it onto her cheek, giving what he thinks is a relieved sigh before closing her eyes. They both end up asleep, and when he wakes, he gets up to leave her sleeping there.  
Except this time he only leaves to make her breakfast. Perhaps, he thinks, she'll come out a little more.  
He knows perfectly well she'll never be the same again, none of them ever will, but he secretly hopes not all of her is gone. He knows a laugh is now a distant goal, a smile even further away.  
He has to try.  
So when he hears the steps creak he almost jumps, even though she is walking ever so slowly down them. She crosses the room to the chair and lowers herself into it, wrapping the shawl around her thin shoulders and not looking at him.  
He is nearly unfazed; if anything, he is elated. The mere fact that she is out of her bed staggers any expectation he'd held previously, though opens many doors to newer challenges.  
He brings a steaming tray of cheese buns, her favorite, to the little table and sets them there, along with a glass of milk. She stares at it but doesn't move. He expected this.  
He leaves briefly to fetch paints and brushes from his home before returning to hers. She hasn't moved from the chair when he returns, but with a little glimmer of hope he sees one bite out of one cheese bun and calls it improvement. Then he sets up his paints, takes a brush, and begins.  
It is akin to a practiced dance that he brings up from his preconscious and knows back to front; he frees what has been dwelling in the back of his mind and is now ready to take flight.  
(Maybe it could help her. He hopes so.)  
The blue he paints on the wall is one he mixed for ages until he found the exact shade for a sun-kissed blue that morning made beautiful and the clouds, however brief, could only soften and make a calmer kind of beauty. The grass he paints is sun-touched too, untrodden on by feet or paws. The right shade of green for leaves, for growth.  
It isn't until he has nearly finished the sun itself that she seems to react, presumably smelling the paint.  
She gazes questioningly at the wall before sitting on the sofa and letting her large gray eyes take it in. She watches him paint, like she used to, and she seems to come back to herself a bit.  
"Violet," she says, so abruptly he almost startles over a whole gallon of paint. "Paint them violet. Not blue."  
She points at the ready stems of wildflowers to which he was about to give petals. He nods obediently and goes to his purple paint, dipping the brush and slowly outlining the curved, pretty petals he is making for her, all for her, so maybe the sun will find her face again someday. After the mural is finished, a meadow surrounds them both, tinged with a sun that Peeta captured just right, as he tends to do everything.  
She just looks at it. An age passes before she speaks.  
"Thank you."  
He looks at her almost hopefully, maybe to see a smile, but he sees something even better; wonder. Which, if anything, is a start.  



	3. shattered glass

His nightmare world, unfortunately, is never faded from their sight, no matter how desperately he would like it to be. The first flashback in a long time sends him to the floor, his hands clenching, his body seizing as he battles images of her killing him with kisses. Drugging him. Re-wrapping his tourniquet then forcing nightlock down his throat. Her face twists and contorts, beautiful and terrible, and he clutches his head in confusion.  
He loves this mutt.  
Mutt.  
No, she is a human.  
But she manipulated him. Killed his family.  
But no, she couldn't have. Couldn't have. Never.  
But she did. Didn't she?  
Out of the corner of his eye he sees her coming toward him, concern etched on her face. He can't let her near him. Not when he's like this. Not when they've made progress. He can't ruin everything.  
"No," he growls. "Stay back. Please."  
She only freezes for a moment. But she's stubborn. She comes closer.  
"Peeta," she says, and the desperation in her voice brings him back a little.  
Her touch on his shoulders makes him flinch, but he doesn't pull away. He doesn't know what to do.  
“Look at me,” she says. She puts her hands on his face, forcing him to, and her eyes break the darkness in his head. Tears fill his eyes and bead at the corners, falling like shattered glass to the floor.  
"Can't..." he chokes. "Can't...hurt you anymore, can't..."  
She guides him into her arms and holds him together, as he has done for her for so many years, and he cries into her shoulder.  
Her next nightmare brings him back to his self-assigned post; calming her screams, his arms protecting her from her own mental torments. She accepts and even welcomes him in, her arms around him tightly until he feels them loosen when she falls asleep.  
She starts to hunt again. It is good for her and it is what she loves, but a new worry attaches onto it. Because now the woods are laced with memories and teeming with dangers of the mental kind.  
She shows up on his doorstep one night completely drunk, clutching a bottle of what he immediately recognizes to be some of Haymitch's white liquor. She smells heavily of it as she wobbles toward him.  
“Katniss?”  
She giggles. “You're – you're funny. Saying funny names.”  
“Okay. We're getting you home. Come on.”  
He closes the door behind him and firmly takes her arm.  
She slaps his chest lightly with as much precision as those intoxicated can muster. “You go home.”  
He gets her to the house just in time for her to stumble away from him and vomit on the grass. He brushes her hair back from her face as she staggers upright, gripping his shirt.  
“I don't feel good,” she says, hiccuping.  
“Yeah, I know. Let's get you into a bath.”  
He enters the already ajar door and makes it as far as the top of the stairs before she vomits again, this time down the front of her shirt. She coughs a little before tottering unsteadily after him to the bathroom.  
He sits her down on the toilet and starts the water running, dipping his hand under the water to make sure it's warming up sufficiently. Behind him, Katniss seems to have become a trifle more subdued.  
“Why, Katniss?” he murmurs, more to himself than her. It isn't really a question. He knows why.  
She isn't in a right state of mind to answer.  
He cleans her up and puts her in the tub. She begins to cry.  
“It's all awful,” she says, and he understands.  
Later, when she wakes from another nightmare and pleads not to be alone, he climbs in with her and she gazes at him, her eyes a little fuller, before she snuggles against him, still breathing hard. Gently he presses his lips to her forehead, smoothing back her hair.  
And he thinks, as his eyes droop closed, that there will be no more nightmares tonight.  
"I love you," he says.  
He knows she can't say it back, not now.  
(But he feels her smile, and that is good enough for him.)


	4. gray morning

They begin a book, an idea of hers that Dr. Aurelius supports and even he has to admit it's a good idea. The book is filled with good people, good things, memories they shall not forget. They add to its pages each day.  
(But he knows something so good would take a lot of suffering before it is beautiful.)  
The page dedicated to Finnick and Annie is hard, but has a little less bite since Annie is still alive. After a while of leaving and crying and getting tired of it, they let the tears drip slowly through their fingers as she writes about Finnick's sea-green eyes, his sense of humor, and everything else he did for them.

Cinna's page is difficult for her, and to let her know he understands they add Portia to the next page. 

When he inputs his dead family, something snaps and he has the most violent episode he's had in years. He seizes her head and crashes it into the wall, causing her to stumble to the floor with a sharp cry. The control that he has gained but not yet used sends him spiraling into shame and remorse for hurting her, and he destroys his studio. When it has reached a point where upturned paint cans lay everywhere and he holds crumpled paper in one fist and a torn part of a canvas in the other, she comes back in, holding a wet cloth to her head and wiping her eyes as they meet his apprehensively, understandable since he almost killed her.  
He comes toward her again, but what they both think is a continuation of the episode is actually exposed inner turmoil that comes from abuse, in his case motherly, that morphs into wild, uncontrollable sobbing as he grabs her and they fall to the floor, his legs no longer able to hold him up. She strokes his hair, crying, as apologies struggle out from in between his sobs.  
“It's not your fault,” she says, tears falling into his hair. “It's not your fault, Peeta.”

The page dedicated to Primrose Everdeen completely destroys her. As she writes, her hands shake so badly that she has to stop a few times to recompose herself. When this fails, as they both know it will because Prim was her whole life, she stands up and leaves him there with the book. He hears her go to their room and close the door.  
Fear for her life eventually takes him upstairs into their room. He finds her hunched over, bleeding, holding her arm, a bloody knife beside her. Her eyes are wide and she trembles violently as he snatches a towel from their bathroom and holds it to her arm, scared to death and lovingly angry.  
“What are you doing?” he almost roars, shaking her hard. She whimpers.  
“I just wanted...I just...I can't...”  
It's difficult for her to talk, so he focuses his attention on making sure blood isn't leaking through the towel.  
He suspects she begins to lose it a little, because once the blood has slowed she begins to say things.  
“Prim,” she says. “I want Prim.”  
He nods a little dismissively, but she looks deep into his eyes, like he should understand. Then she looks away and stares all throughout their bedroom and through the house.  
“Prim?” she calls, as if Prim is going to come through the door and surprise them. “Prim?”  
“Katniss,” he says. She shakes her head, looking around.  
“Prim-”  
“Katniss, listen to me!” he says. “She isn't there.”  
Katniss wails.  
“Why won't she come?”  
He takes her pale, distraught face into his hands a little roughly, smoothing back her hair.  
“You look at me and listen. Prim can't come because she is dead. She's dead, Katniss.”  
Tears begin to fall down his face as he splinters at this dark, horrid thing that forever changed the woman he loved, destroyed her in every way it could and then some. Katniss is looking into Peeta's eyes, her own beginning to fill with tears.  
“She's dead and I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry sweetheart,” says Peeta, his hand shakily stroking back more of her hair as he weakly attempts to pad what he knows will hurt. “I'm so sorry, my love. I want to take it away, I want to make it better. I want to make it all better. I'll try my best, you hear me? I'll try my best. I'll try my best. I love you, Katniss. I love you, I love you. I love you.”  
He knows she is trying to combat the information in her head and he also knows she will fail long before she does. He sees her tears spill over, spill all over, watches her face crumple into a broken expression of grief and of devastation at the weakness of her denial. That Prim really is dead.  
He leans toward her and presses his lips to her forehead, her face still in his hands as she begins to whimper, loudly, brokenly, begging him for help. He continues to plant kiss after kiss on her forehead and in her hair, tears falling freely down his own face now.  
Her own sobs, when they finally do come, are nothing like he has ever heard before. An animal of grief wrenches its way out of Katniss' chest and sobs wildly, angrily, wanting to kill and wanting to love.  
He grabs her and pulls her into his arms.  
She takes her fist and beats it against his chest, still sobbing, her cheek pressed against it. He strokes her hair and sobs too.  
They are numb for a few days after this. No tears, no words. Just sleepy, quiet comfort. In the early hours of a gray morning, He stirs and moves, waking her, who had been nestled in his arms. They both move slowly, sleepily, but neither of them get up. Her eyes are half-open, trying to get a look at him, who is gazing at her. Amazing how he can still see such beauty in the face of such damage.  
“Hey,” he murmurs, his hand coming to touch her soft face, which he is always so relieved to see doesn't frown while she is sleeping peacefully. She opens her eyes.  
“Hey,” she says back. She isn't smiling, not really, but she nonetheless reaches out her small hand to put behind his shoulder and pull him closer to her, where his nose is tickling hers, where she can feel his warm, strong chest against her own. This is the closest they have been in awhile, but it doesn't feel without provocation. They both need it.  
They don't speak the rest of the day, but stay in bed, holding each other together, breathing in each others' scents, and dreading the following morning.


	5. you're beautiful

He touches her in the heat of the moment one night when they are in bed and he kisses her, wanting always to pull her closer and closer until he can wrap around her completely. He pulls his hand away from her sloped collarbone, embarrassed and afraid that perhaps he has gone too far. That he has destroyed more of their progress. "I'm sorry," he says.

She sits up to face him, gazing at him as she takes his hand and moves it back to her collarbone, strokes it lightly back and forth, still gazing.

"Why?" she breathes.

They slowly begin to undress each other, both completely inexperienced in anything of the sort. He is gentle, so gentle, as he presses his lips to her neck, her shoulders, her back. He is tentative to explore, but she nudges him on, taking his hands and guiding them to the clasp of her bra. He kisses her breasts then too, lightly, as if he is afraid she will shatter under the slightest pressure, which he supposes she could, given their brokenness. He lays her down on the bed and presses into her, making them one whole out of two splintered halves. She makes a small noise of pain and in panic he tries to stop, but she doesn't let him. She clings to him and gasps his name, trying to bring him in closer. From somewhere unknown tears begin to fall down both faces, perhaps because they did not know it was possible to feel so good, or so loved, ever again.

She holds on tight and whimpers. Out of want or fear, he does not know. "Shh," he whispers. "Shh..." He cries as he kisses her tears away. But he conveys in his comfort unspoken reassurance.

_We'll do this together._

(Because that's how they do everything.)

And they do, so when they both collapse, sweaty and hoarse from the sounds they were making, it feels like a united act.

But as always, their mental punishments, both self-inflicted and instated by another, resurface. One day she plucks a letter from District Four out of the pile of unopened mail, a letter from her mother, and the reminder of why her mother is so far away wreaks devastation in her head. He finds her in the garden having a full-on tantrum. She hurls stones, breaks everything she can break. Soon remnants of pots are strewn, smashed and ugly against the ground. It takes her ripping up half the garden vegetables before the tears come. She collapses like a stiff board, shaking and sobbing. He holds her close, saying nothing and yet everything.

(He knows.)

He takes her upstairs, puts her in the bath, and begins to wash her, running the cloth over her scarred, grafted body. She is still so beautiful to him no matter how she gripes about herself, and after a few half-hearted, self-deprecating comments mixed with hopeless and angry weeping she gives up and resorts to sniffling. "You're beautiful," he says quietly but firmly. It brings tears to her eyes that he wipes away when he washes her face. He then pours water through her hair, rubs some shampoo into it, and massages her head. She gives a small moan of pleasure and leans into his touch, beads of water dripping from her hair onto his shirt.

He wraps her in a towel after he has rinsed her, and they stay close on the floor, her in his lap, wrapped in warmth, her head on his shoulder as he gently holds her and rocks her, her arms around him too. "You're beautiful," he repeats. She nestles into him closer, believing it a little.

The next words are out of his mouth before he can stop them.

"Marry me."

Silence, until she shifts slightly in his arms but doesn't pull away.

"Yes," she says.

He did not imagine it in these circumstances, but any childhood fantasies died with the people who still haunt their dreams. And now, he knows, what is between them runs much deeper.


	6. fifteen years

He knows, after a few years, that he wants children. He also knows that she won't. She's sworn against it for years, not wanting to punish any child she brought into the world with their society.  
He waits a few months before asking her. She is calm then, telling him she isn't ready then quickly changing the subject. He knows it's difficult for her to talk about, and he tries his best not to push her, but his heart already yearns for the children they don't have. So after two years, he asks again. Still no.  
He asks every year for fifteen years. The answer is always the same. At year ten, the no has a bite on the end of it. At year thirteen, he doesn't expect her to melt down completely, wailing and shaking her head, her hands over her ears reminiscent of Annie Cresta.  
That night she screams for Prim.  
He tells himself not to bring it up again for a long time. Possibly ever, he thinks miserably, as her sobs echo through the night, reminding him of what she has lost and how she can't lose anyone else.  
She regresses a little after that incident. He blames himself.  
She comes with him to the bakery and watches him make cakes and cookies and frost them with his artist's hands. Little children come, reaching small grubby fingers out to his free cookies, and she watches him say sweet things to them and observe them leaving with a different light in his eyes.  
One particular day they hear a crash from the door. They bolt out, expecting bombs or an attack or the world to splinter and open, revealing new nightmares to haunt their already plagued nights. He runs out first, she follows reluctantly.  
(Who is the braver of the two? Neither of them know.)  
He kneels to comfort a small girl who had run in to see one of his well-known cookies and tripped, falling, banging up her knee and knocking over a display. The child is hysterical, and she braces herself to run out and calm a flashback, surely brought on by the child's cries.  
The moment never comes. He takes the girl onto his lap and dries her tears. He calls quietly for his wife to fetch him a bandage and she does so, avoiding both their eyes, not wanting to be swayed and knowing she was at risk for such. She hastens back to her place but is unable to tear her eyes away from her husband and the child. He bandages the little girl's knee and puts a kind arm around her.  
"Hey, hey, it's okay. You're all right, see? Can you smile for me? Come on. Dry your eyes, you're okay now. You're okay. Give me a pretty smile."  
The little girl wipes her eyes and gives him a small smile, because how can't she with those sweet blue eyes comforting her, and the security that comes with kind adults? She still sniffles a bit though.  
"Look at that," he says. "Look at that smile. And since you were so brave just now, I'll give you a cookie from me. How's that?"  
That certainly gets a smile out of the child. She hugs him around his neck and he hugs her back.  
"Katniss? Can you pick a cookie out for her?"  
She picks one that seems like the child, a pleasant orange one with a yellow flower. The girl peers into her face as she kneels and looks this darling child in the eyes.  
"Here," she says, a new kind of softness in her voice. "For you."  
The girl hugs her too, and she hesitates before allowing the feeling.  
She prays he won't look at her in that way that he does, and he doesn't, but his eyes seem to follow her everywhere anyway.  
She approaches him a week later.  
"Peeta."  
"Hmm?" He is sketching.  
"I'm ready."  
"For what, honey?" he says absentmindedly.  
"I'm ready. I want them."  
It's a wonder her lip hasn't yet bled from how hard she's biting it.  
He looks up, confused. "Huh?"  
She clasps her hands, takes a step closer. She is sure enough now, that she can. But she wavers so precariously on the edge of consent that she knows once she tells him, she won't be able to deny him anymore than she has.  
He wants this, and she has come to find that she does too.  
"I want to have a baby," she says.  
Before he can withhold himself he launches himself off the couch and into her arms, tears leaking from his eyes in disbelief and joy. He doesn't know what made her change her mind, and he knows how hard it's going to be for her, but he will help her get through it. As much as she can.  
It's the least he can do since she relented, finally, after fifteen years.  
"Thank you," he says, crying against her. "Thank you."


	7. creating life

She has been vomiting every morning for a straight week.  
After flatly denying any sort of ailment or treatment for one, her concerns are taken to Greasy Sae and Sae confirms her suspicions.  
The first thing she does with this information is keep it to herself, because she has never been so scared in her entire life. But Peeta is worried, holds her hair and rubs her back in the mornings when she heaves over the toilet. She feels guilty again, because she shouldn't keep things from him in the first place.  
She tells him finally one morning after vomiting on and off for close to an hour, spit and slime hanging in thin tendrils from her lips as she struggles to return her breathing to normal.  
"I'm pregnant," she says, and bursts into tears.  
(The tears aren't happy, he knows. They're frightened. She's frightened.)  
He knows how scared she is, knows that she envisions losing this child to a bomb or a Reaping, though neither of these still remain in their society. He tells her that they are creating life, not destroying it.  
She sniffles and nods, wanting to believe him.  
He won't let her hunt two months in; he insists it is dangerous for the baby. After a glance down at her slightly rounder belly, she doesn't argue with him.  
She feels it move during the fourth month one idle afternoon when they are at home. The dish she is holding crashes to the floor and he finds her sitting there, her knuckles whitening as she grips a table leg, her arm around her stomach.  
Once he is sure she is not in pain, he cautiously lays a hand on her belly, feels its firmness and rounder shape. He feels a shifting inside her and she grabs his arm and squeezes until he is sure it will fall off. In every bit of tension that clenches in her grip, he can feel her fear at something invasive and foreign moving around inside her. It's an aftereffect of war victims.  
She almost pushes his hand away in fear as the baby moves again. He guides her hand away.  
"No, no, it's okay. It's okay. Let me feel. Let me feel."  
She lets him feel the baby, who does not know, and will never know, how much fear it is causing its mother. But he knows, in time, that she won't be afraid of it.  
(Though he does know that she'll always be afraid of letting it down.)   
During the sixth month, they are told by Greasy Sae and other well-wishers how to determine the gender. She almost doesn't want to assign one to the child, because she will then have to accept that it is really coming in three months. He wants to know immediately. Greasy Sae tells them that baby girls tend to sit higher and move less, while baby boys rest low and move around constantly.  
It is by this information that they learn Katniss is carrying a baby girl. She plants herself in the rocker and merely sits a while, her hand never leaving her belly.  
That night she has a nightmare about a faceless girl with Prim's scream who burns alive in front of her very eyes. She wakes up gasping, crying, her arm around her stomach, as if to protect the child there.  
"She's burning, she's dying," Katniss cries, and no further elaboration is needed.   
Peeta tells her that they are safe, that their daughter is safe, that no one can hurt Prim anymore.  
Then he puts a hand on her belly and tries to calm their daughter down, who is indeed moving in apparent alarm at her mother's distress. He rubs his wife's belly, his arm draped over her, and he feels her grip loosen as she falls asleep.  
He feels a flashback coming on in the early morning hours. Somewhere in his mind that darkness has not yet poured into, he has a wife who carries his unborn daughter. This propels him out of bed and down the stairs, into the innermost sanctum of their house; the small room under the stairs. There is one blanket on the floor and he lies on it, waiting for his demons to cease their eerie chorus, his fists clenched and his eyes squeezed shut, his jaw working furiously in his taut face.  
She finds him there anyway, because she can't sleep for long if he isn't there. He tries to send her away, surely she must know the danger in her proximity to him. But she won't leave.  
He tries to wake himself up, accommodating for her stubbornness, and scrapes his wrists against the wall. She tries to stop him and before he can control himself he pushes her away from him. He sees her hit the opposite wall, her hand on her belly, and he realizes what he has done.  
He shrinks away from her touch, even then she tries to touch him, tries to bring him back. He sobs when he sees her bruise and turns away from her. He is too dangerous. He never wants to hurt her or their baby. He'd never forgive himself.  
"Peeta," she whispers. "Look at me."  
He does, and she wipes the tears from his face.  
"It isn't your fault."  
And he cries, because deep down he knows that those who are really at fault are trying to kill them from their graves, and he cannot do anything but fight it, and pray that one day it will retreat. Until then, he is a sometimes monster, unpredictable when awakened and shaken to death when brought back to reality.  
She lays his head in her lap, which can barely fit now but just allows him to put his ear to her swollen belly.  
She begins to sing to him, to the baby, and they fall quiet to listen. He is certain once or twice he all but stops breathing at how pretty her voice still is. Her fingers run through his hair and he fights the urge to drift off, his wife singing him and his unborn baby daughter to sleep.  
He whispers the occasional apology and she shushes him when he does so, knowing the feeling. She also knows that they can't let a permanent setback drag them back down into darkness, or their sorrow too will be permanent. They should be relieved, now, that he didn't hurt the baby. And they are.  
He paints the nursery for three days straight before letting her see it. She waddles in, her belly huge and getting bigger every day, and sees he has painted a garden of flowers for their daughter to awake to.  
It is his second most beautiful and treasured work, he tells her. His first is who he painted it for.  
She says nothing, because she is so touched.  
Over time, she becomes accustomed to the room. She will have to be, they decide, since after the baby comes she'll be there much more often.  
She thinks he hasn't noticed her sitting in the chair in their daughter's nursery, gazing down at her belly as she rubs it and talks to the baby.  
"I'll keep you safe," he hears her say, and the source of the wavering in her voice is anybody's guess. "I promise. I'll protect you. Nothing will ever hurt you."  
(He believed it all along, but hearing her say it brings such a warmth into his heart.)


	8. everything's going to be fine

Their daughter arrives in the springtime. She awakes to contractions and wakes him immediately, wincing. He calls Dr. Aurelius, who confirms that she is in labor, and receives continuous instruction throughout the entire course of it, which takes a little over a day. He keeps her comfortable, props her up on pillows, helps her walk when she needs to. She holds onto him, moans and cries through the pain. He is holding her up again, like he always does and always can.  
She starts to lose it as she gets closer. Panicks. Cries a little. Even at one point telling him she has changed her mind, that she'll keep the baby inside her, as if she can really do that anyway. He talks her down quietly, knowing she is in pain and that she speaks out of fear for the small, delicate little life they are soon to be responsible for.  
And then it's time. When she tells him she has to push, he tells her not to be afraid. That she can do it. He knows she can.  
After a difficult hour of pushing and straining and at times shouting, he delivers their first child, who after a last great effort slips out into his arms and starts to wail, signaling her arrival into the world.  
The baby girl has her dark hair and his blue eyes that gaze up at him in wonder. He notices, as the baby turns her gaze from her father to her mother, that all fear is gone from his wife's eyes, replaced by shock and what could be, might be, joy. He watches tears run down her cheeks as she cups the baby's small head and holds it to her heart, holds her baby close to her and intending never to let go.  
They live in fear the first month, apprehension in the second. But it becomes clear to both of them that they are no danger to this child until she is old enough to ask why her mother screams at night sometimes or why her father grips the back of chairs. She is them moving on, and nothing from the past can touch her. She is good for them both, adopting a sparkle in her eyes that lights up when she laughs and a smile that heals her mother a little every time it appears on her sweet face.  
Their daughter keeps them busy, which, in a way, is also a way to repair what is broken.  
(It could be considered going through the motions if she wasn't constantly teaching them as much as they taught her. Even more so, sometimes.)  
He throws out casually one day, their daughter on his knee as he paints, that their child needs a playmate. She consents more quickly this time, admitting that she does not want her daughter to grow up lonely. He thinks he can see a shadow of Prim in her eyes and doesn't bring it up.  
They recognize the signs the second time around, and when she is big enough for them to determine gender, they know the baby has been moving almost nonstop and that it sits low inside her.  
The idea of a son is one he entertains gladly. He thinks, or perhaps hope imagined it, that she is actually excited. It's a little easier for her to feel the baby move inside her this time, but she still shakes a little, still becomes paralyzed with fear when he kicks.  
The night before she goes into labor she goes off her head completely, scared for all the same reasons as before. He holds her and reassures, as always, that it will be fine.  
Her water breaks the next night, resulting in labor that actually takes a little less than a day. Their daughter spends the day at Greasy Sae's while he rubs his wife's back and listens to her moan.  
It seems almost unexpected, even after several hours, when the boy finally arrives. One moment he is coming to help her walk to the bathroom since she asks him weakly to take her to the bathtub, perhaps have the baby there. He is unprepared for her suddenly refusing to move from the floor, saying that she has to push right _now_ before pulling back her legs and starting to push their child out of her body.  
He drops to his knees in an instant and holds his hands out to catch the baby. She is shaking, gasping, but preparing. Steeling herself.  
He sees the top of the head, plastered with blond hair, force its way through, then the nose, then the mouth. She gives one more push, and he delivers their son. They all cry upon seeing each other but she cries because she sees him in their son's round face, which after the wailing has stopped and the baby is feeding, does indeed exhibit his own bone structure.  
The water runs, forgotten, in the background.  
Like he had said, everything would be fine. She feels as if she can believe him. Then they request their daughter back home, and after he carries the boy and his mother to bed, their daughter crawling in beside them, they all fall asleep together as a family.  
(Then, she is sure she believes him.)


	9. a spark

The girl dances as soon as she is old enough to, and her brother tries to follow her lead on his toddler legs. They dance in the meadow, on top of what used to be ruins. They know this, the parents, and they watch from their porch, their hands clasped. He knows she wonders everyday how they are going to explain their issues, can see it in every wrinkle, every gray hair. But he reminds her of their book, and that they can tell the children everything in a way that will make them braver.  
She smiles wearily and he kisses her head. They have each other. They'll be okay.  
The girl plops down on his lap cheerfully, hugging his neck, while the boy crawls to his mother.  
She seizes him suddenly and presses her lips to their son's head so long and so meaningfully that he knows she has never regretted their children. The girl joins them and he watches his wife kiss their daughter too and hold them both close, clinging, her hands on each of their heads. He comes close until they are all in the hug as a family.  
Then she looks at her children, gazes at them really, and he notices something burning in her eyes. Something like fierce love. As she turns her gaze from them to him, it becomes ever clearer.  
And he smiles.  
(He thought he'd noticed that spark in her eyes again.)


End file.
